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AT-Cap KritikCapitalism can be reformed – acceptance of totalitarian government destroys individualism, worsening the economyScarlett Economics, August 2008, history of economic theory and thought, “Keynes’ Philosophical Approach to Policy,” http://www.economictheories.org/2008/08/keynes-philosophical-approach-to-policy.html Policy combines theory with normative judgments. Understanding the Keynesian revolution, therefore, requires a consideration of the general philosophical views of economists at the time, and of Keynes in particular. Keynes was not a radical, although he was accused of being one after publishing The General Theory. We would hardly expect a person of his background, education, and experience to argue for drastic changes in the institutional structure of his society. Keynes was basically conservative in his views about altering the structure of society, generally advocating only such changes as would preserve the essential elements of capitalism. His view was that if the worst defects of the system were not removed, individuals would discard the capitalistic system and lose much more than they gained. His rejection of Marxism reflects both a criticism of Marx's economics and a recognition that a Marxian social system would destroy the social class of which Keynes himself was very much a part: How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Keynes was dismayed by the growth of totalitarian government and dictatorship in Germany, Italy, and Russia. He was willing to admit that these changes in social organization might solve some economic problems, but such a solution, he felt, would be purchased only at the cost of individualism and its economic and political advantages. The economic advantages of individualism, stemming from the use of self-interest to achieve greater efficiency and innovation, are well known to economists: But, above all, individualism, if it can be purged of its defects and its abuses, is the best safeguard of personal liberty in the sense that, compared with any other system, it greatly widens the field for the exercise of personal choice. It is also the best safeguard of the variety of life, which emerges precisely from this extended field of personal choice, and the loss of which is the greatest of all losses of the homogeneous or totalitarian state. Keynes's broad philosophical views on the structure of the good society led to attacks from two sides. Those to the left of him considered him an apologist for capitalism and for his own class, and those to the right regarded him as a wild-eyed reformer-socialist seeking to dismantle the capitalistic system. We have already seen his response to the Marxist approach. His response to criticism from the right was at least more conciliatory. He wrote, "While, therefore, the enlargement of the functions of government. . . would seem ... to be a terrific encroachment on individualism, I defend it, on the contrary, both as the only practicable means of avoiding the destruction of existing economic forms in their entirety and as the condition of the successful functioning of individual initiative."17 Keynes found one of the chief benefits of capitalism to be the free play it gives individualism. What abuses do come from individualism, he believed, could be corrected without destroying capitalism. The chief defects or faults of capitalism, he said, "are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes." AT-Cap KritikMarx’s rejection of Keynesian solutions is incoherentJ. Bradford DeLong, May 1st, 2011, economist teaching at UC-Berkeley, “Marx’s Half-baked Crisis Theory and his Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17,” http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/05/marxs-half-baked-crisis-theory-and-his-theories-of-surplus-value-chapter-17.html From one perspective, this theory of Marx is is wrong: because his value theory is wrong, his deductions that balanced capitalist growth is logically impossible because if a boom is to continue must continue at an increasing rate is not sound. From another perspective Marx is right: sooner or later as capitalist accumulation proceeds there will come a negative shocks to animal spirits, and there will come a sudden excess demand for money, and there will come a crisis. What I do not understand is Marx's rejection of monetarist or Keynesian solutions. Marx says the ancient and feudal modes of production did not have crises. Why not? Because they used their surplus for crusade or war or display or elite consumption and not for accumulation, hence the surplus was recycled into demand for labor and there was never any of the interruptions of M-C-M' that we get under the capitalist mode of production when capitalists lose confidence that if they turn their M into C they will then be able to turn it back into M'. For the government to see the surplus for public betterment in a downturn would seem to be just as effective a cure for depression under the CMP as conquering Gaul is under the AMP or building a cathedral is under the FMP. I think—I am not sure, but I think—Marx's rejection of a monetarist or Keynesian cure is based in part on the fact that Marx is like Ron Paul: he believes there's something wrong about credit. The liquidity the government creates by printing money is to Marx, I think, fake liquidity that is bound to come to a bad end. The only real liquidity for Marx gold. Second, Mark [Marx] finds it inconceivable that a government of the ruling class would tax the ruling class in order to boost the consumption spending of the public sector and the poor. Thus expansionary fiscal policy to cure or a downturn is ruled out by Marx's theory of politics. But of course we really do not know how Marx would have closed what seem to me to be gaping logical holes in the crisis theory I can rationally reconstruct from chapter 17 of *Theories of Surplus Value8. The problem is that Marx never made his arguments tight and coherent. The problem is Marx never engaged anybody like John Stuart Mill in a debate on business cycle theory. 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